Getty in a Place to Break Down Cultural Walls

When you spend a billion dollars on a building complex, you can hardly avoid having an impressive technical infrastructure, and so it comes as no surprise that the spectacular new Getty Center--now nearing completion on its hilltop perch in Brentwood--incorporates a trove of nifty innovations.

A tramway that’s really a horizontal elevator whisks visitors up the hill to the five-building museum and research center. Computer-controlled louvers will keep the galleries bathed in just the right amount of natural light, and advanced air-monitoring and filtering systems will protect the artworks. An elaborate multimedia computer system will offer myriad new ways to explore the Getty collection. New methods were even developed for cutting and setting the giant blocks of travertine marble from which much of the center is built.

All of this will doubtless help make for an extraordinarily popular tourist attraction, just as it has already helped make the five Getty institutes a magnet for scholars from around the world.

Yet the real challenges the J. Paul Getty Trust faces in using technology have little to do with beautiful buildings. With the December opening of the center and the appointment last week of California State University system Chancellor Barry Munitz as its next chief executive, the Getty is entering a new phase of public involvement. It wants to shed its reputation as a remote citadel of high culture and engage a far broader community--a task in which new technologies can play a crucial role.

And the Getty, which even after its spare-no-expense construction project will have more than $4 billion in the bank, is in a unique position to demonstrate some of the broad potential--and limitations--of computer and communications technologies as tools for education, community development, historical preservation and other social goals. The democratic, open-access nature of the Internet may run counter to the traditions of an elite institution like the Getty, but precisely because of that it can help break down walls.

Consider, for example, an event that took place this spring in the converted Crenshaw district factory building that houses Breakaway Technologies. Breakaway is a nonprofit group that provides computer training for poor, mostly minority children, and it had joined with the Getty Information Institute to host a community “Web raising.”

The goal was to help community nonprofit groups and arts organizations build their own Web pages. Many of those pages, in turn, became part of LA Culture Net, an ambitious effort to link a broad spectrum of local arts and education organizations. Eventually, LA Culture Net aims to create an easy means of accessing everything from the online collections of local museums to theater listings.

“We’re trying to show how network technology can aid in community development work, and get culture at the center of a conversation online,” explains David Jensen, manager of the project. The Information Institute’s broad mission is to make art and cultural objects universally accessible by developing electronic indexing and archiving systems, and LA Culture Net hopes to demonstrate this on a local level.

Similarly, a Getty Research Institute project being carried out in conjunction with the Los Angeles Public Library involves high school students in gathering information about the history of their neighborhoods and using it to create Web sites. The first neighborhood to be so “mapped” is Boyle Heights, a community with a rich and often little-know immigrant heritage.

Project manager Moira Kenney says the Web presence is what turns the kids on, giving them a fun outlet for expressing what they’ve learned. Over the long term, the Research Institute--which is devoted to the scholarly study of arts and the humanities--aims to build a comprehensive “community archive” of historical and cultural artifacts.

The trick, of course, is to build these things in a way that people will come. The technical task of developing tools and systems for digitizing and cataloging works of art and cultural artifacts is formidable, certainly. But it pales in comparison to the problem of creating an online environment that’s inviting, useful and enduring as a resource and gathering place.

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These challenges are similar to those facing private companies trying to create online communities or develop new kinds of education and consumer information services. With a few exceptions, such ventures have had difficulty building large audiences.

The Getty has a special opportunity because it isn’t subject to the tyranny of the “business model.” It doesn’t have to worry about selling advertisements on its Web pages, or collecting subscription fees, or finagling funds out of cash-strapped school administrators.

Moreover, it can retain exceptional control over the design of its projects rather than opt for prepackaged vendor solutions. In building its multimedia system, for example, the Getty Museum designed its own database, network architecture and user interface from off-the-shelf components. The Conservation Institute even does some pure research in its efforts to develop better techniques for protecting and restoring art and cultural artifacts.

Since the Getty is a philanthropic institution, when it finds good solutions it can essentially give them away to other nonprofits that might benefit. In that respect, technology development serves the Getty’s goal of being a resource for the arts and humanities communities worldwide.

The risk is that without the discipline of the market, it’s easy to spend a lot of money on projects that seem intriguing in principle but don’t have much reach in practice. LA Culture Net, for example, has been drawing about 500 “hits” a day, and though the number is growing fast, it will eventually have to be many times higher than that if the effort is to be considered a success.

At a time when the pace of technological change dictates a certain alacrity, a wealthy foundation with a culture of meticulous attention to detail can easily find itself behind the times--especially when efforts to collaborate with others slows things down even more.

If the Getty’s technology efforts end up serving only a narrow group of arts administrators, aficionados and scholars, they will be little more than an electronic version of the ivory tower--internally focused and disconnected from their surroundings. But as the Getty moves to invite the world into its rarefied environs, technology can help it to open its doors even more.

Jonathan Weber (jonathan.weber@latimes.com) is editor of The Cutting Edge.